Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight RPG is clearly inspired by D&D, but a novel ‘Plot Die’ adds a twist
Brandon Sanderson, author of The Stormlight Archive series, has been on a roll in recent years with multiple multimillion-dollar crowdfunding campaigns. The promise of four secret novels earned his Dragonsteel Entertainment more than $41 million in 2022, and it later raised another $23 million for a series of leather-bound reprints. Now he’s teaming up with tabletop publisher Brotherwise Games for The role-playing game Stormlightcoming to August 6th Kickstarter. Polygon got an early look at a beta version of the rules , and what we found is a d20-based game that plays pretty closely to traditional Dungeons & Dragons. There’s one big difference, though: a weird little dice that sounds really, really interesting.
The die in question is called a Plot Die, a six-sided die that’s only used “for particularly important rolls,” according to the beta document. These are moments in time when someone wants to “raise the stakes” — specifically, when a roll could “directly contribute to the current mission,” “directly play into a character’s objective, obstacle, or goals,” or involve “other tests of high tension or dramatic importance.”
Rolling a five or six will earn players an Opportunity. Opportunities can be used to do things like help an ally, regain a mental resource called “focus,” land a critical hit, or positively “influence” the story. Rolling a one or two, on the other hand, will award a Complication. Complications are roughly the opposite of Opportunities and will hinder an ally, cost players their focus, or negatively impact the story.
Interestingly, the GM or the players can decide to raise the stakes at any time, pending GM approval. That gives players a lot of say at the table, giving them the ability to inject some extra spice into every action that could change the plot of the game. Additional guidelines say that GMs should aim for about a third of all rolls to include the Plot Die, which pretty much guarantees that there will be a few interesting plot twists during the average two- to four-hour play session.
The only question I have is whether the beta document, and by extension the final version of the game, gives players and GMs sufficient instruction on what it means to influence the story. Is the mechanic something that will enrich the player experience, or is it an example of the developers offloading design work onto the players to improvise storylines at the table? Fortunately, that’s exactly the sort of thing a beta is designed to solve. Fans of The Stormlight Archive and TTRPGs in general can give it a shot when the free 94-page document lands alongside a 30-page introductory adventure as the Kickstarter campaign goes live on August 6th.